Chapter 60: Consequence of Chaos
The explosion roared through the clearing, a violent wave of force that should have torn through everything in its path. Yet, for Velren, there was no fire, no shockwave, no debris. Only darkness.
It swallowed him whole the moment Professor Vekar’s barrier snapped into place. The sounds of destruction beyond it dulled, as if the world itself had been muted, leaving only the weight of the void pressing against his skin.
Velren’s breath came slow and steady, but beneath that, there was unease. His instincts screamed at him—this wasn’t just an ordinary defense. It wasn’t like Solenne’s barrier, nor was it a conventional dome of protection. This was something else, something deeper. The darkness didn’t just block out the explosion. It felt like it had consumed it.
He couldn’t see Eterna in his arms, but he still felt her presence, the faint rise and fall of her breath against his chest. At least she was still there. Still real. Unlike this endless black, stretching in every direction with no horizon, no up or down—
Until...
The suffocating darkness around him began to thin, retreating like mist dissolving under the morning sun. Velren felt it first—a subtle shift in the air, a loosening of the oppressive weight pressing against his skin. Then, without warning, the black dome fractured, splintering into wisps of shadow before vanishing entirely.
His vision returned in a sudden rush. And what he saw left him stunned.
’What the hell...’
The forest, once dense and unyielding, had been utterly transformed. Trees that had stood for decades were now nothing but splintered stumps, their trunks either vaporized or flung far beyond sight. The ground was torn and scarred, deep trenches and jagged fissures marking where the explosion had ravaged the earth.
Yet, at the center of it all—directly where Cloaky had fallen—was something that shouldn’t be there. Amidst the devastation, the metallic clearing remained untouched. The ground beneath where Cloaky had died, a perfect circular plate of polished silver, was completely intact. Not a single crack nor a single mark of damage can be seen on it.
The explosion should have destroyed everything in its radius, yet the metal remained firm, unyielding, almost unnatural.